Old threads being bumped by new members

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I have no issue with it apart from having to call it a necro bump.

Sometimes it's also funny, I was searching for something and found a thread started by poster 'x' , it was necro bumped years later only for someone to notice that poster 'x' now had a different username and had posted 'who started this stupid thread'. They are still active today.

There was once a thread here that was started back in 2004 by a member who hadn't been around since he started the thread. Then the same member suddenly returned in 2019 to continue the same thread, resurrecting it from its long death after some 15 years. It was a political thread, containing arguments and disagreements, and the member returned just to carry it on.

It amazes me that a person could start a thread, not return to the site for 15 years then suddenly return and continue a thread like he was last here yesterday. I even checked his last visit and that said 2004 too. Maybe he fell into a coma for 15 years and his first thought when he woke up was "oh I never did win that argument in that thread I started".

I mean, 2004 to 2019 is a very long time. Just think what you were doing in 2004 compared to what you were doing in 2019. In 2004 I was still at school. By 2019 I was coming up 30, had moved out of my hometown and in with my boyfriend and in my second job.

It is worth recognizing that this is probably more likely to happen around here, where a lot of folks do have delayed processing related challenges. Some folks may be a bit quicker, but some folks can take a few days, or possibly longer, to realize that they want to say something and what it is. This is on top of anybody that has the typical non-native language delay or any sort of learning disorder.

Personally, as long as the necroposts don't crowd everything else out, and people are actually having a reasonable conversation, I don't see much of an issue. I’m also one of those people that's trying to pay a lot of attention to which subforum I'm posting in, checking dates as well is more of a nice to have, especially with the topics below the posts.

I do find the lack of distinction between Post and Comments -- they are all just posts, here -- weird. So many of the conversations got started in 2007? It's peculiar.

I think organizing by time-stamp should focus more on the time stamp on the original post. necro posts should not be bumped to the top for a mere comment. But maybe I'll get used to this. But really, it makes me hesistant to comment on things becaues I don't want to "bump" even this conversation (which itself is over a month old and apparently few people care about it, so while I want to put in my opinion, I don't want that to result in this being bumped to prominence.

I think this is going to make me feel rather timid to comment a lot. Because I agree with this critique a lot -- i've never known a message board to organize the way these do, by the time stamp on the latest comment completely ignoring the time stamp of the original post.

I guess I'll just try to get used to nearly 20-year-old posts like "what are you listening to right now?" that have nearly 10,000 pages like.... Yeah, I'm just gonna need to get used to that. I'd rather there be, say, 20-30 new posts over the years in which people asked "what are you listening to right now" and the redudancy to be welcome. With this organization, there is the pressure to ensure you're not merely duplicating a time-honored thread where those in the know already know that's the thread where we discuss such things.

Like I've explained several times already in this thread, some topics are OK to be bumped. It's the topics about somebody's personal problems that was posted like 10 years ago and most likely has been resolved but then gets bumped and everyone continues giving advice to a user who is most likely not even a member here any more.

For example, a thread could have been created in 2007 with the title "should I go to college?" and it had got responses then died a natural death within that year. Then all of a sudden it gets bumped in 2023, with advice to the OP about college, when the OP of that thread had probably served his time at college and university, got a degree he wanted, and is now running a business and has a wife and 6 kids, and most importantly is not a member here no more. These sorts of threads don't need attention after they have died out.

Sometimes I see an interested subject and I go to look at it and then I notice the date and think "oh f*ck it that person is no longer a member"... And I just simply move on.

I think it's just because maybe someone has done a Google search for something autism related and an old thread has popped up and because of that the bumper has joined up.

At least it brings in new members.

Forum threads are like books on the library shelf.

Also worth saying - I've been on other forums where members are actively discouraged from starting a new thread if there's an older thread about the same subject. Even if it's so deeply buried they couldn't have known about it.